DOI: 10.36871/hon.202004018
Authors
E. V. Panova
Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
Abstract
The article is devoted to one of the central works of creative heritage of the composer Cesare
Pugni — the ballet "The Little Humpbacked Horse", which premiered on the stage of the Saint
Petersburg Imperial Bolshoi (Stone) Theater in 1864 with choreography by Arthur Saint-Leon.
"The Little Humpbacked Horse" was one of the ballets that survived the October Revolution
of 1917 and was firmly established in the repertoire of Soviet theaters.
For more than one hundred years, this work was very popular with the public, but due to
the appearance of the ballet of the same name by R. K. Shchedrin, it was performed much less.
This article analyzes the musical text of the ballet by C. Pugni on the basis of the clavier "The
Little Humpbacked Horse", published during the author's lifetime, and reveals the features of
the composer's approach to writing music for choreographic performance.
Particular attention in this work is paid to the composer's method of working with musical
material. C. Pugni not only skillfully stylizes and enriches the score with the genre features
of Russian folklore, but also weaves quotations from popular works by other authors into the
original musical fabric. In the ballet "The Little Humpbacked Horse" the composer uses the
leitmotif system.
In conclusion, the ballets are briefly characterized, which use Russian folk tales or their
literary stylizations as the basis for the libretto. The significance of "The Little Humpbacked
Horse" as the first choreographic performance in the history of Russian musical theater is assessed,
in which such a plot is interpreted.
Keywords
C. Pugni, ballet music, Imperial Theatre in Russia in the second half of the XIXth century, A. Saint-Leon, ballet "The Little Humpbacked Horse", ballet composers at the Imperial Theatre, the history of the ballet theatre
